


This Kind of Magic

by wisdomeagle



Category: Angel: the Series, Firefly
Genre: Community: cya_ficathon, Crossover, Episode: s05e22 Not Fade Away, F/M, Future Fic, Metaphysics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-09
Updated: 2006-04-09
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:11:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4703930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They all thought Fred's soul was destroyed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Kind of Magic

A soul is not a thing like a piece of candy: digested, discarded. A soul is not a thing that can be burned away or destroyed, though many think they know the way. A soul is not a spirit, breath of life, that breathes its last and is no more. The last exhalation of breath does not expel the soul, because the soul is bound to the body by magics deep and transparent, thin shreds of soul fiber that extend across dimensions, the ropes that, even long after death, will hold a ghost captive in his hometown, can cause a vampire's heart to break though he long thought himself heartless.

The science of souls is studied at the underground labs of Blue Sun, in an antiquated brewery that has always been the screen for alchemical enterprises, in the top secretest of top secret laboratories of Wolfram and Hart. In all dimensions and in all spaces, the soul is a thing unknown, mysterious, dangerous and defiant. It cannot be chained by sorcerers or understood by theologians, and a freed soul is the most volatile and unpredictable substance in existence.

This particular soul is one that quite a few people would pay good money to see destroyed permanently, but the likelihood of its owner dying a natural death is freakishly small, especially given the state of things in the alleyway where he's fighting side by side with the blue-hued monster who, coincidentally, recently attempted to destroy another soul, currently trapped between dimensions, but likely to awaken at any moment with a scream when she sees what's been done to her body.

Spike doesn't know any of it. 

If he knew, he'd be doing exactly the same, swinging hard and violent and swift against the demons in the alley, looking everywhere but up, seeing and not-seeing Illyria fighting beside him. 

Spike knows something about souls that Blue Sun has killed to discover, but it's a lesson Spike couldn't teach, not with a pool cue and a back-alley, not with a burning cross, hot in his hand. What Spike knows of souls lives inside him and he likes it there, where it can be safely ignored. It's when knowledge becomes manifest and alleys unfold themselves to reveal dark kingdoms that things go wrong for Spike, and things are bad enough already. A dark swarm of gnats on his left hides Illyria from him, and a milky white excretion gets in his eyes. He reaches blindly to his right, punches something rough and scaly, and a moment later is blissfully unconscious.

When he wakes up, he's alone with the dust.

++

When Fred wakes up, she feels herself gingerly for bruises before she dares open her eyes; the last thing she remembers is... she can't remember the last thing she remembers, and all she sees are snatches of scenes that she's sure she never witnessed, gray-blue snapshots of an epic battle she never was a part of, feathery wings against her cheeks that she brushes back with strength that isn't hers. When she finally flutters her eyelids open, she finds herself trapped in blackness. Hands up, to the side, measuring the enclosure. She's used to tight spaces and not screaming, so she silently breathes in dust and breathes out danger. 

There's a scratching on the top of the box, and then a burst of light, and facing peering at her, whispers and jabs and "Simon, you'll scare her!" and then a warm hand around her wrist.

"Nothing like a girl in a box to liven things up, is there?"

"Captain," says the same girl's voice, chiding. 

Another voice, feminine, "Are you all right?"

Fred tries to say she is, but she can't make words form in her mouth, and she ends up coughing instead, and even her cough sounds weak.

"She okay? Doc, wanna take a closer look?"

"Answer that careful, Simon," says the girl, and Fred decides she likes her. 

"I'll... just give her a quick check-up," stammers the boy who must be Simon, and Fred finds herself dragged out of the box, blinking grime and trying to figure out why her stomach feels so wobbly. Simon says she's healthy "as can be expected," and the girl, Kaylee, who's keeping a careful eye on Simon, smiles kindly at her.

"We'll get you delivered safe and sound," she says.

"To who? I mean, to whom?"

"Cap'n checked him out," Kaylee tells her. "Says he's been waiting a long time for you."

That worries Fred. The only people who are likely to wait a long time for her are probably waiting to make sure she's completely dead. Which reminds her. "Hey."

"Yes?" Simon looks slightly frightened of her.

"Am I dead?"

Now Simon's actually backing away from her. "Not as such," he says.

"Because I think I ought to be dead."

"Best just to let us get you where you're going," says Simon. "Save the questions for the client."

Fred nods. It's probably a good time not to ask so many questions, because she's pretty sure questions are what almost got her killed last time, but it's hard not to ask questions when (you're pretty sure) you're on a spaceship, and you're some sort of expensive package. She doesn't stop questioning, exactly. She just keeps the questions inside her head while she plays jacks with Kaylee and drinks tea with Inara and talks particle physics with River. The answers come as clicks of understanding, puzzle pieces, parts renamed, the Alliance and Blue Sun and Wolfram and Hart and all the evil that ever existed still lurks on the border planets. And someone, out there, is waiting for her.

And then the clicks click together in one burst of understanding, and in the middle of the night Fred knows with heart-knowledge, soul-knowledge, that someone survived the alley (brush of dragonwings and the taste of dust) and is waiting for her. She knows what year it is; she knows of earth-that-was and she knows that it's impossible. She also knows it's true.

++

Spike waits for her in the dust and hidden from the sunlight, counting coin and drinking brandy and blood, doesn't matter if it's human blood or not, not anymore. There are things he'd like to have in his past, stories to tell her, courage to weep over, things that will make her press their foreheads together and dangle her hair like tears onto his shoulders. He hasn't. Just battles that blazed around him and left him dusty and alone, the hidey-hole on a rocketship that saved him from the last ravages of the disease that destroyed earth, and the ticking, bleeding, bloody soul inside him that he tried and failed to rip from his chest when he knew that Buffy was dead.

He sits, and waits, and feels the slow simmer of spell that split Fred's soul from her body, and the darker spell that put it back, not because he needed her, and not because he loved her best, but because there was her soul, and there was Illyria, and there was the magic.

And now, on the gangplank of Serenity, is Fred. She smiles, and Spike smiles back.


End file.
